“Welcome writer! Your arrival has been foretold, is welcome and is needed. May I ask your name?”

“My name is Jean Frost Smith and I’m not sure–”

“Three names? That denotes a storyteller of great power. Thrice welcome, Jean Frost Smith. I am simply Miluna.”

“Please, Miluna. I don’t even know how I got here. This is very strange to me.”

“All will become clear. Please – sit by the campfire and let us exchange more pleasantries. We will partake of refreshment, then I will take you to the elders — no, no, I see you are about to protest. You cannot escape your fate, Jean Frost Smith. You MUST tell our story. We have great need.”

The perils of free Kindle cookery books.

I love recipe books, mostly because I love to cook and eat – although I do hate the washing up. I’ve collected quite a few free ones via Amazon and tried out some wonderful new recipes. Some have been a bit substandard, but you can’t win them all. A couple of books have gone to the archive section, mostly due to strange formatting, or unobtainable ingredients, but then I haven’t paid a penny for any of these books, so no complaints from me.

Occasionally, you come across one that is so off the wall, that you wonder how it ever saw the light of day. One such book is Best 25 Easy Pancake Recipes by Eternity. Nice, semi-pro cover with some delicious-looking pancakes. Mmmm…mmm.

However, when you try to read the recipes, you wonder if you’ve entered some strange, Stanley Unwin-esque parallel universe – I hope you’re old enough to remember Stanley Unwin – if you don’t, run his name through Google and be prepared to giggle. (Google Giggles? D’you think I could get Google interested in a comedy search engine called that?)

Here’s the first recipe, for ‘Fluffy Pancakes’:

“Tall along with cozy. These kind of pancakes are merely appropriate. Topped using strawberries along with whipped ointment, these are extremely hard for you to fight.”

See what I mean? Whipped ointment? Germolene? Preparation H? The mind boggles. And why would I want to fight fluffy pancakes? Are they that dangerous?

It continues:

“Incorporate take advantage of using white vinegar in a very channel serving along with schedule pertaining to 5 units for you to “sour”.

Incorporate flour, sweets, the baking powdered ingredients, the baking soft drink, along with sodium in a very significant mixing up serving. Whisk egg along with butter straight into “soured” take advantage of. Fill your flour mix in the soaked substances along with whisk until eventually piles have passed away.

High temperature a huge griddle around channel high temperature, along with cover using preparing food bottle of spray. Fill 1/4 cupfuls involving mixture upon your griddle, along with prepare food until eventually pockets look on the outside. Change which has a spatula, along with prepare food until eventually browned conversely.”

TBH, I don’t even know where to start with those instructions. I think I’ll just post a few more choice quotes from this mine of……..something.

“These are generally very good just about any time nevertheless tastes ideal in frosty winter months mornings. You may use scripted as well as cooked properly fresh new pumpkin.”

I did ask a nice chap at Asda about “scripted pumpkin”, but even after consulting his database, he couldn’t find any. The recipe, sorry “receipee” continues:

“Within a jar, mixture in concert this use, pumpkin, egg cell, fat in addition to vinegar. Merge this flour, brown leafy mister, preparing your receipee dust, preparing your receipee pop, allspice, cinnamon, ginger in addition to salt within a different jar. Awaken into your pumpkin concoction plenty of to combine.

Warm some sort of delicately oiled griddle or maybe frying pot in excess of choice high heat. Dump or maybe info this crepe mixture on top of this griddle, applying somewhere around 1/4 goblet for every single pancake. Brown leafy with both equally features in addition to work sizzling.”

More? How about German Pancakes? You’d expect the recipe for German Pancakes to be the epitome of Teutonic accuracy and expertise, wouldn’t you?

“Piping sizzling in addition to puffy on the the oven, that older pancake manufactured a reasonably speech for just a skier’s topic dinner When i published. Functioned having the handmade buttermilk syrup, it truly is a eye-opening address. With such ease syrup seems good with waffles in addition to The french language destroyed, far too.”

Maybe not.

I’m fairly sure it’s not me hallucinating when I read these recipes – after all, I can actually remember the 1960s, so I can’t have been exposed to too many mind-altering chemicals.

I’ll just finish off with a few more choice quotes:

“Position your ovum, take advantage of, flour along with sodium in a very blender; deal with along with course of action until eventually easy. Fill your butter straight into the ungreased 13-in. a 9-in. a 2-in. the baking recipe; put your mixture. Prepare, revealed, in 300 certifications Y pertaining to 20 units.

On the other hand, in a very saucepan, incorporate the 1st a few syrup substances; take to your facial boil. Facial boil pertaining to 7 units. Take away through the high temperature; wake throughout vanilla. Airborne debris pancake using confectioners’ sweets; provide quickly while using syrup.”

Facial boil? Shouldn’t you be seeing a doctor with a boil on your face, not incorporating it into your recipe?

This recipe is too avant-garde (should that be oh-my-garde?) for words:

“My new mother built these kind of delightful pancakes made use of inside Depressive disorder several years. The girl overcom your mixture personally, nevertheless I prefer our blender. It lets you do a terrific employment throughout extracting your holiday cottage mozerella for the easy mixture.”

Just one last quote before I go and position my ovum:

“Lisa Sammons involving Lower Standard bank, Montana continues a major portion on this pancake mixture inside chiller to relieve your day run. ‘The glowing, cozy pancakes are generally just the thing for On the brunch, ha the girl stocks. ‘And in the 1 week, that they find each of our a pair of little ones off of for you to a good start ahead of institution.”

Please don’t ask me for advice on how to relieve your day runs (or night ones for that matter), I’ve no idea what the author is talking about.

It’s a shame that Amazon removed this book for quality issues before I got a chance to post my review, so here it is on my blog.

Hello, my name’s Elsie Stratford and I’m six years old. It was my birthday yesterday and also the day I started work. Yes, SIX years old – Mam kept me back an extra year because I’m so small. She said she wished she could send me to school like the boys but it’s more important that boys can read and write and we need the money because wages have gone down and I’m eating more.

It’s my job to sweep the floors to get back the metal. The more metal I find, the more I get paid. I got a whole penny yesterday but Mam says that’s because the previous girl died and the floors hadn’t been swept for days. She bought enough potatoes with my penny to last all eight of us for the week and the grocer gave her some carrots that had black spots for free. I felt so proud to be helping my family.

I need to get in the corners more, me being so small should help with that. Ethel says her baby brother is bigger ‘n me. Mam says Ethel needs to keep her mouth shut.

I thought sweeping floors would be easy, I didn’t know I’d be crawling under the thundering grinding-wheels while they were still spinning. The work is dusty and I already have a cough. Mam got me a sack from the foundry. It doesn’t have too many holes and it’s tied around me with a bit of old rope so I don’t get my clothes too dirty. It trails right past my knees.

The women smile at me kindly but I don’t understand what they say. I said one of the words at home last night and Da gave me what for. He says I must never talk like them, or the minister won’t give us food. I don’t like the minister, he makes me feel sick inside the way he looks at me.

I can’t talk much longer, the foreman is glaring at me. Mam says he’s all right unless I annoy him too much. Maggie is always smiling at him and brushing up against him. Rose says that if she keeps that up there’ll be babbies. If that’s how you get babbies, I’ll run away the next time the minister does that to me.

Time to tuck my hair back in my bonnet. One of the older girls gave it to me – the last girl wouldn’t wear it and her hair caught in the grinding-wheel.

That’s how she died.